Monday, April 18, 1927: New York City

“The Weekend”

Myles Thomas

Published in

1927: The Diary of Myles Thomas

16 min readApr 18, 2016

Even in New York City, there’s nothing like waking up on a warm spring morning to the sounds of birds chirping. And croquet balls clicking. And champagne glasses breaking.

It’s a gentle reminder of another party that never quite ended.

Friday Night (Saturday Morning)

This season I’m living in a second-floor apartment, in one of eight brownstones that Steven and his swells have bought just off of Central Park, on 73rd Street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s only two blocks from the Babe’s sprawling apartment in the Ansonia Hotel on Broadway, and the same distance from one of the elevated train lines that snakes its way from Greenwich Village up to Yankee Stadium.

Steven bought this house as part of his master plan to buy up most of the block and turn it into a private playground for him and his Wall Street gang. It came with a small 20-foot by 30-foot backyard that butts up against the backyard of another brownstone on 74th Street. Shortly after he moved in, Steven decided that he wanted a larger yard, so he put together a syndicate of his pals and in two years they’ve bought eight buildings, four on 73rd Street and four on 74th Street. Then they tore down the fences that separated them, so now they share one big backyard that’s 120 by 180 feet. Their plan is to buy a couple more buildings, expand the yard even farther and turn it into a garden with a pool and a dance floor. Of course.

Steven and his gang are all making so much money that they’re able to get loans from the banks that don’t require them to put down any cash. As he’s explained it to me (more than once, and with a smile each time): “We’re using the bank’s money for the houses, so we can put our own money to better use, investing in the stock market.”

A few weeks ago Steven landscaped the backyards into a croquet lawn decorated with an “Alice In Wonderland” theme, full of pink flamingos, caterpillars, white rabbits, top hats and a pair of live peacocks. On the back walls of the houses, at both ends of the garden on the second floor, he embedded Christmas lights that flash on in the form of the Cheshire Cat’s smile, and then vanish into the dark. Friday night, at midnight they were smiling over a crowd of some 200 people and Duke Ellington’s six-piece jazz band, the Washingtonians.

The Washingtonians have been the house band at Club Kentucky on 49th just off Broadway since the winter of ’24. Club Kentucky’s a small basement speakeasy with no windows. It gets so blazing hot in the summer that no band can play there. Every June for the past few years, as an annually shrewd business decision, the gangsters who own the club have torched it, to collect on the fire insurance. Steven calls it being struck by “Jewish Lightning.” Between blazes, Ellington’s band has really come on in the past year, and they’re now regarded as the best small band, black or white, in New York.

They haven’t played Club Kentucky since the middle of March, and rumor has it that Ellington’s moving up to Harlem, to the Cotton Club, a larger and more elegant joint run by the gangster Owney Madden.

Friday night the Duke and his band started the evening playing the music to their “Chocolate Kiddies” revue, and I don’t think there are any chocolate kiddies that can play jazz any better. The garden was hopping to their hot music till 5:00 a.m., I’m told.

I went up to my floor around 3:30, since we had a game the next day at the Stadium. It was far from a midsummer night but it was warm enough that I could keep my window open and listen to the band and the echoes of laughter and lust as I drifted off.

Stanwyck’s laugh was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep. And it was the first thing I heard when I woke up.

A little before 9:00 a.m., she and Steven were still out in the yard, making up new rules for croquet that involved placing filled champagne glasses inside the wickets. As far as I could tell from looking down at them, if you missed an easy shot you had to drink the glass. If you made the shot and broke a glass, you had to fill up a new one, drink it, and then fill it again for the next player. Steven was still in most of his tux and Stanwyck was being kept warm by a fur coat that Steven had lent her. Or so he thought.

They looked quite wonderful playing amongst the detritus of the night, neither one of them at all concerned by the broken shards. The sun was especially bright and sparkled off the glass, and off Stanwyck’s eyes once she looked up and saw me watching. “Tommy!” she shouted. “Look, Steven, our little boy’s awake. Don’t move, Tommy! Stay right there! I’ll cook you breakfast before you have to go!” Then she turned back to line up another shot, and played on as if she hadn’t seen me.

I left them to their game and jumped into the shower. When I got out, Stanwyck was at the door holding my towel for me.

Saturday 11:00 a.m.

Late Saturday mornings in the locker room at Yankee Stadium are always full of energy, no matter how little anyone has slept. It’s because we know we’ll be playing before a big crowd, which all of us, especially Ruth, feed off — we know that come the top of the first, when the starters jog out to their positions, the entire Stadium will come alive and roar like a locomotive. We can feel it in our muscles.

Often we’ll be playing in front of family, friends, or dames. Of course, Ruth knows the whole stadium is there to see him, and on top of that he probably has a hundred people that he personally knows at each and every game. The rest of us will have at least a half dozen who’ve come to cheer us on. And Gehrig’s got his mom.

No matter who Lazzeri and Koenig know in the stands, they always dedicate the game to one new girl they’ve never seen before. It started last year, when they were both rookies. Before one of our first games at the stadium in ’26, Koenig spotted a girl in the stands, and she smiled at him. Cupid’s arrow apparently struck his bat, because to lead off the game, he hit a ball off of Red Ruffing of the Red Sox that cleared the wall. So now our two San Francisco kids, before every game at the stadium and on the road spend a couple of minutes picking out the girl that they’ll be playing for. She never knows they’ve picked her out, but they play for her as if they’re trying to save her soul and take her virginity at the same time.

Saturday Afternoon

Ruffing and the Sox were our victims again today — he lasted five innings before being pulled for a pinch hitter. On the mound for us, Urban Shocker, pitching his first game of the season, had a rough first inning and gave up 10 hits in all, but still managed to pitch a complete game, winning 5–2.

Despite our victory, the crowd went home slightly disappointed because no one on either team hit a home run.

Saturday Night (Sunday Morning)

According to the newspapers, there are between 30,000 and 50,000 speakeasies in New York City, depending on what you’re calling a speakeasy. Some are holes in the wall the size of a one bedroom apartment, others are the size of an old-time bar, while a few fill up an entire townhouse. You can basically find one on any block in Manhattan.

This town is wetter than Venice. There are so many watering holes hidden in plain sight that if you live in a building without an all-night doorman, you have to hang a sign out front that says, “Not A Speakeasy.” If you don’t, some time between 1 o’clock and 5 o’clock in the morning somebody will be ringing your doorbell looking for a drink. It happens all the time. Whether the actual number is closer to 30,000 or 50,000, the best is always whichever one Texas Guinan is running.

Texas is the brassiest broad there is. She came to New York in the teens, from Waco, and worked as a hoofer and vaudeville skirt before heading out to Hollywood, where she made a bunch of shorts. She was the first cowgirl in the movies. I remember seeing her when I was in high school. Her films were only okay, but what’s aces is that she did her own stunts.

When Texas got a little old for the films, she came East. She worked in a number of juice joints, first just as a regular hostess, though that didn’t last long. Soon she was up on the stage, hosting their shows. With most dames it’s their face or their body that makes a guy want to keep coming back to a joint, but with Texas it’s her mouth — every time she opens it, she makes the whole club laugh. It doesn’t matter who else is there — Jolson, Louis Armstrong, Mae West — Texas is always the main attraction.

Texas and Larry Fay, the rum-running mobster whose fleet of New York City taxi cabs is rolling constantly from New York to Canada and back, used to own a place together, and Fay gave her free rein to put on her shows. Texas brought in 40 young girls, twice as many as any other joint, put as little on them as possible, and brought in Broadway hopefuls to create song and dance numbers, most of which involve the girls singing and dancing right in your lap. The old place was packed tight, it couldn’t even fit a hundred customers, which is one of the reasons Texas liked to loudly promise, “a fight a night or your money back.”

**Texas Guinan and her girls with gangster Larry Fay at The Club**

Stanwyck started dancing for Texas four years ago, while she was in the Ziegfeld Follies as one of their ponies. She was 15. She would finish up the Follies show around 11:45 p.m., and then she and some of the other chorus girls would rush over to the “El Fey” club, flying through the back door just in time to take part in Texas’s midnight show, then dancing and what-not till 5:00 a.m.

One of Texas’s full-time dancers is Stanwyck’s double‑date gal, Ruby Keeler, a great 16-year-old hoofer that Jolson’s always lurking around and leering at. Most of their double dates are with gangsters, so for the last two years when they go out, the girls look out for each other while they’re “dinner hooking” for a steak and maybe a fur. The Keeler kid was only 14 when she first got into the show. (She told people she was 17. No one believed her. And no one cared.) One of the reasons all the girls are never without a lit cigarette is that they’re convinced it makes them look older. I don’t know a single bootlegger, banker or ballplayer who doesn’t see through their smoke. That’s part of the thrill. For both parties. Hell, Texas is winking at their age every time she says her patented phrase, “Give the little girl a big hand!”

Cover charge at Texas’s place is $20. A pint of whiskey $12. At some other joints a pint of gin will only cost you $2, but at Texas’s it’s $10. Just a pitcher of water goes for $3 — not that many of her customers are asking for water. And a bottle of some of the good stuff will run you over $100. By the time you walk out the door your wallet’s at least a hundred, usually two hundred lighter than when you walked in. (In Steven’s case, that’s double, since I’m always on his cuff.) But, by the time Texas and her girls are through with you, you don’t care about the tab. That’s why she greets everyone with a warm and rowdy: “Hello, sucker!”

Nobody can complain they weren’t warned.

Except when the joint is busted.

And that happens a half dozen times a year, maybe more.

**Texas Guinan. The end of the evening.**

Back in ’24 the Prince of Wales was inside with a 16-year-old flapper on his lap when the cops crashed the door. Texas lassoed him and hauled him into the kitchen. There she took off his jacket, mussed up his hair and put an apron on him, so he looked like one of the cooks. (I don’t know how far down the royal line the Prince of Wales is from the throne, but I know it ain’t as far down as the kitchen.) Just about every other customer in the joint rode in the paddy wagon that night, but not the Prince. To show his appreciation, he bought Texas a swell diamond bracelet she calls her Crown Jewels.

Last Fourth of July, the golfer Bobby Jones came into Texas’s club the night he got off the boat from England, anxious to celebrate winning the British Open the week before. He and Walter Hagen were dancing the Charleston at three in the morning with all 40 gals. Also in attendance that night was Bob Meusel’s brother, Irish, who was playing for the New York Giants and a few of his teammates, along with crazy Rabbit Maranville and a half dozen of his fellow Brooklyn Robins. Just to round things out, the crowd also included three well known gangsters, two current U.S. senators and one former president of Cuba. Unfortunately for them, it turned out that a pair of the flappers that night were female undercover cops.

As soon as the fake flappers blew their whistles, Texas jumped up on a table and started blowing hers. Of course, the alcohol agents who were flooding through the doors were all blowing their whistles, too. But Texas never stopped blowing hers, so next thing you know she’d maneuvered the prohibition agents into a vaudeville routine over who is and who is not allowed to blow a whistle during an official raid of a New York speakeasy.

Eventually, Bobby Jones, Hagen, the dozen ballplayers, the three gangsters, the two senators and El Presidente were all hauled into one paddy wagon, while Texas and her girls got tossed into another. Naturally, only one of the wagons made it back to the station house.

As Irish Meusel tells it, the cop driving the boys’ wagon stopped after going half a mile, and asked, “Is it okay if I let you boys out at Columbus Circle?” And that’s when Rabbit Maranville asked, “Can you take us up to the Cotton Club?”

On the way up to Harlem, the three gangsters almost shoot it out for who gets to tip the two cops in the front seat of their wagon. Eventually, each donated a hundred, as do both senators. Every ballplayer I ever met has short arms and long pockets — except for the Babe, we’re always looking to be on the cuff, even when it comes to a bribe — so Rabbit, Irish and the boys all rode on the gangsters’ beneficence. El Presidente, I’m told, rode on their cuff, too.

This Saturday night, just as we were walking into Texas’s club, Steven was telling Bill Powers the story about the Prince of Wales when suddenly Billy P., who’s as big as the Babe, puts his arms around our shoulders, stops us in our tracks and says, “The hell with the Prince of Wales, boys. Tonight it looks like we’ve got the Prince of Broadway!” There on stage, through the smoke and the skirts and the arms and the legs and the sparkles and the bobs, sitting at the piano, playing with the band is Gershwin. He’s once again the toast of the town with his new musical, Oh, Kay! He and Texas’s band were on fire, flaming wild jazz as we walked through the door. Steven’s seen Gershwin play here before, but this was a first for me.

We had just gotten our bottle of gin when the band suddenly stopped playing and the place went completely dark. And then — pop! — there was a single spotlight on Gershwin. At first you couldn’t hear what he was playing, but the place quieted down quick. In fact, I don’t think one of Texas’s joints has ever been quieter, except maybe the morning after it’s been shut down and padlocked.

Gershwin played as softly and as gently as if he was lullabying a baby to sleep. At first it didn’t sound like a song at all, just quiet notes. Like a whisper. Like a wish. And then, after about 30 seconds, even the gangsters in the room knew what it was. At least, the gangsters who had seen Oh, Kay! (which is all of them — because while New York gangsters despise plays, they love musicals almost as much as they love prize fights — somebody should write a musical about gangsters who love musicals, it would run on Broadway for the rest of the century, maybe longer).

Gershwin was playing the hit song of his show, “Someone To Watch Over Me.” He played it for a minute, and then he stopped, like he had forgotten how the tune went. And then you heard her voice.

The spotlight slowly widened out, and there leaning up against the piano, looking like a lost kid was Stanwyck. She was wearing an ill-fitting tuxedo jacket, with a white shirt and the black tie, undone. The shirt was long enough to act as a dress. You could see her legs. And you could see her feet, she wasn’t wearing any shoes. She looked like a little girl who had woken up in the middle of the night and had put on her father’s shirt and jacket, and then suddenly didn’t appear entirely like a little girl anymore.

She looked down while she sang, as shy as “a little lamb, lost in the woods.” But every now and then she would glance up, and give the room a sly smile. And then — just as the light would hit her eyes and they would start to sparkle like they had earlier that morning in the garden — she would look down again. As she sang, you couldn’t help but believe that she really was asking for someone to watch over her.

And every guy in the room wanted to volunteer for the job.

Sunday Afternoon

I never did catch up with Stanwyck, and I left Steven and Texas at the club around four, so I could get some rest before Sunday’s game, which turned out to be a laugher.

Ruth only got a single but Gehrig hammered two home runs, one in the first with Ruth and Combs on, the other in the eighth, with Ruth again on base. All told Lou had six RBIs. Waite “Schoolboy” Hoyt went the distance for us. He made one mistake on a ball in the fourth that Jack Tobin, who didn’t hit a home run all last year, jacked out of the yard. And then in the ninth, Schoolboy got a little lazy, or perhaps tired, and gave up a run before striking out Bill Moore to end the game.

Ruth’s hit just one home run so far this season, and after the game he was moaning about being in a slump. (He’s only hitting .316.) As far as I can tell, the only people worried about Ruth are the Red Sox, who play us two more games before we head down to Philly for a series against the A’s. Everyone on our team knows it’s never too long before the Babe does something big.

Texas showed up at the game, which isn’t a regular thing. The press recognized her right away in her big, yellow cowgirl hat. Benny has a pair of German Army binoculars that he keeps out in the bullpen to spot girls with. Today we used them to keep an eye on Texas. Benny said she was sitting next to the mobster and Broadway producer, Owney Madden.

We both found that much more interesting than the game.

April 16, 1927: “Yanks Are Outhit, But Down Sox”. New York Times article and Box Score.
April 17, 1927: “Every Yank Scores, Red Sox Lose, 14–2”. New York Times article and Box Score